Public Safety committee  If I understand your question correctly, let me just say that in respect of the police in the situation you raise where something goes wrong, where there is some type of misconduct and it's referred to professional standards or internal affairs, as they might say on TV, that is in respect of the discipline of members of the police.

Public Safety committee  The court in B.C. wrote, for example—and the correctional investigator told you this week—that one of the most disturbing elements of the whole framework is that for years, CSC had been avoiding the independent chairpersons in disciplinary segregation and circumventing them to go to administrative segregation.

Public Safety committee  Good afternoon and thank you for inviting me to testify today in unceded Algonquian territory. I'm from the B.C. Civil Liberties Association, which along with the John Howard Society, are the organizations responsible for the B.C. court decision that I know most of you probably read around the table.

Justice committee  Well, children were not in the judgment; it was competent adults. Children are another question.

Justice committee  Can I grab that for 30 seconds?

Justice committee  Yes, governments make provisions for different classes of people all the time. In this case, the Supreme Court has already said that these classes of people—people with terminal illnesses and people who don't have terminal illnesses who qualify—are entitled to this right. The constitutional floor has been set.

Justice committee  We have other issues about that, but in terms of respecting Carter, it's not open—in fact, it's unlawful—for the government to pull people out.

Justice committee  Sure. Thank you. As it is, this bill proposes a number of restrictions and hurdles that are not the case anywhere else in life-and-death decisions in medicine—decisions that are made every day to withhold and withdraw life-sustaining treatment, decisions that are made every day that involve death by some action or intervention taken.

Justice committee  I did. Thank you very much. Mr. Cooper made remarks, Mr. Chair, to the effect that the plaintiffs had suggested there be various safeguards, including mandatory psychiatric evaluations and other things. Those were in our submissions replying to Canada, which speculated regarding individuals whose capacity we couldn't be sure about.

Justice committee  There are a number of reasons. I've enumerated some of them, and our written submissions describe the matter in a little more detail. Let's say there was another charter rights case in which there was a class of persons who won a right. Take gay marriage, for example. Let's say that in response to a case on gay marriage—or pension rights, or that kind of thing—the government of the day said, we're going to bring in a bill, but because the plaintiff was a gay man, and although yes, there was mention of lesbians and trans people throughout, and so forth, we're going to just restrict it to gay men, and it will be up to lesbians at some point in the future to bring another case.

Justice committee  I'm happy to offer the last word on it. Despite the passage of time since Morgentaler, there's no meaningful shift in the reasoning that was used there. Justice Bertha Wilson, in that case, concurred with five different judges, and they all gave different decisions. She remarked that this section takes the decision away from the woman at all stages of her pregnancy.

Justice committee  I don't have anything to add to what Ms. Gibson said.

Justice committee  Thank you very much. I'm pleased to be here today. I just want to say that although I'm not addressing all of our concerns today, the B.C. Civil Liberties Association continues to stand by our previous submissions to the parliamentary committee that went before. Today my focus is simply on making the bill Carter-compliant.

Physician-Assisted Dying committee  I'm afraid, Senator Cowan, I don't really have a lot to add to what Ms. Morris has said. I would echo the things she's said. The provincial–territorial report has also set out, as I'm sure you all know, some different scenarios that I think we can draw from in informing ourselves about this issue.

Physician-Assisted Dying committee  That's exactly the kind of scenario in which we would say you would need an advance directive: to ensure that someone who does lose competence is still able to have their wishes in this respect carried out. We think that's important.